Notes for the Scribe

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell

This page needs to be updated.

Responsibilities

Minutes

• Take minutes at the main Guild meetings. (And maybe any others, too.)
• Send them out to the list.
• File copies in the locker on the Wiki: Meeting Minutes.
• Try hard to make minutes entertaining so people will bother reading them.
• Beat your predecessor until you get the minutes of the meeting at which you were elected.

Email

• Send/answer all general email regarding the Guild.
• Maintain the mailing list and make sure people are added and removed in a timely fashion.
• Keep stock answers to send to people about what the Guild is (the discuss archive is a useful tool for this one, though there are a few in the Scribe directory).
  • These need to be migrated to the Wiki.
• Remember to send recent applications to people being added to the list. (I haven't been doing this lately, but I should be.)

Paper Mail

We don’t get too much of this, but it should be showing up in the ASA office.

High Council's scheduling

Make sure that the High Council as a whole does the things it needs to when it needs to. Scheduling meetings and games is the big one here to keep an eye on. If your predecessor hasn’t scheduled Summer, get on that.

Web Site

• Maintain and update the contents of the public wiki-slash-website.
• Make sure that the wiki software is functioning properly and not running anything too outdated or vulnerable.
• Deal with any spam posted to the wiki.

Things to maintain include:

• The lists of current and past High Council members
• The list of upcoming games
• The list of past games

Mailing List Reminder

Sometime in early Spring, you should send out a reminder mail to the Guild about the assorted mailing lists that the Guild maintains. Sample email template:

To: assassins-guild@mit.edu
Subject: Mailing Lists + Slack Invite + Resources Reminder

Hi everyone!

Now that it's the new semester, and everyone has hopefully recovered
from the 10-day, you may wish to take a moment to review the other
mailing lists, communication platforms, and resources that you might
want to take advantage of:

https://assassin.mit.edu/web/Mailing_Lists_and_Communication

In particular, here's a fresh invite to the Guild's Slack:

<NEW SLACK INVITE>

Any questions? Email high-council@mit.edu or reply to me directly.

<YOUR NAME>
Guild Scribe

Sanity Checking

Though not specifically the job of the Scribe, all members of the High Council should keep an eye out to make sure that the High Council doesn’t make any stupid decisions. Precedent doesn’t matter nearly as much as common sense.

Game Scheduling Timeline

There are four Seasons in the Guild: Spring, Summer, Fall, and IAP. These correspond to the MIT academic calendar.

The first weekend slot in a season is the first weekend that occurs after the first day of classes, or the second weekend after Spring finals for the Summer season. This is the slot for the Rush game during the Fall season. The last weekend slot is the weekend before the last day of classes.

To figure out when to send out the Call for Games for a season, you work backwards from the first weekend slot.

• The final schedule should be sent out at the latest one weekend before the first slot. We'll call this Weekend Zero.
• Moving from a draft schedule to a final schedule usually takes about a week, so give yourself a week. This means that the draft schedule should be sent out during Weekend Negative One.
• You should try to turn around a draft schedule as soon as the (possibly extended) bidding period closes, but usually stragglers take a few extra days. So you should have the extended due date be the Wednesday before Weekend Negative One.
• Because you may need to extend the due date by a few days if there aren't enough games, the original due date should be the end of Weekend Negative Two.
• The bidding period should last two weeks, so it should be released on Weekend Negative Four.

Sample calculation, for Summer 2019:

• The last day of Spring finals is May 24th, so Weekend One is June 1st.
• This means the final schedule should be sent out on Weekend Zero, the weekend of May 25th, right after Spring finals.
• This means the draft schedule should be sent out on Weekend Negative One, the weekend of May 18th.
• This means the original due date for the bid should be Weekend Negative Two, the weekend of May 11th.
• This means that the bid should be sent out on Weekend Negative Four, the weekend of April 27th.

Sample calculation, for Fall 2019:

• September 5th is the first day of classes, so the first game slot is the weekend of September 7th.
• So the schedule should be out on August 31st.
• So the draft schedule should be out on August 24th
• So the original due date should be on August 17th.
• So the bid should be sent out on August 3rd.

• May 2nd, May 16th, May 17th: Call for Summer Games due May 28th, May 31st, June 1st

 Draft sent June 11th, June 6th updated June 9th. Final sent June 16th, June 12th.

• August 12th, August 21st, August 15th: Call for Fall Games due August 26th, August 31st, August 28th

 Draft sent Sept 7th, Sept 9th. Final sent Sep 12th, Sept 11th.

• November 11th, November 12th, November 13th: Call for IAP Games due November 26th, November 26th, December 4th

 Draft sent Dec 2nd, Nov 29th. Final sent Dec 14th, Jan 4th.

• January 21st, January 9th, January 15th: Call for Spring Games due January 31st, January 25th, January 25th

 Draft sent Feb 5th updated Feb 5th updated Feb 6th, Feb 1st. Final sent Feb 12th, Feb 7th.

Days from draft to final schedule: 5, 6, 5, 2, 12, 36, 7, 6. Usually about a week.

Days from deadline to draft: 14, 6, 12, 9, 6, 3, 5, 7. Usually one-two weeks.

Deadline extensions: 1, 2, 2, 0, 3, 8, 0, 0. Usually two days.

Open period: 26, 15, 15, 14, 10, 13, 15, 24, 21, 10, 16, 10. Average of 16 days. Usually two or three weeks.

Other Notes

Things to check before releasing the schedule

• Are the dates correct in the top section?
• Do the dates in the body of the email match the dates in the top section?
• Are all of the names spelled correctly, and without any typos? (Extra commas, etc?)
• Is there any weird spacing in the copied blurbs?

Things to schedule around

As of 2014ish or 2019ish, try to schedule around:

• Palantir Puzzle Hunt (actually VERY important!)
• Mystery Hunt! (this is critical)
• Arisia
• Intercon (spring)
• MIT's academic schedule: finals, parents weekend, CPW, rush, breaks
• East Side Fair (R.I.P. steer roast)
• Splash (November. eats a bunch of rooms; plus, there's Splash patrol)
• Spark (March, afternoon to early evening)
• CPW

Also be aware of:

• Witchwood
• Tales of Valor (especially for SIK games)
• Future Imperfect (especially for SIK games)
• Firefly (4th of July weekend)
• Easter (mostly relevant for the spring guild meeting)
• Passover (mostly first 3ish days)

See Also

The original Greensheet.